Today, 8 September, the world celebrates International Literacy Day. It is a day to celebrate the power of reading and writing, and to remind us why literacy matters to every child. 

For Puku Children’s Literature Foundation, International Literacy Day is more than a date on the calendar.  It is also a day when we celebrate a great honour. UNESCO awarded Puku the 2021 UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize for its programme “Using digital technologies to promote children’s literature in South Africa’s indigenous languages.”  Puku was recognised alongside literacy initiatives from Guatemala and India, placing a South African children’s literature organisation on an international stage. The recognition is particularly meaningful because the UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize gives special consideration to mother-language-based literacy development — a principle that lies at the very heart of Puku’s work.

And this International Literacy Day 2026 is especially significant for Puku. Today, we are thrilled to launch our new Puku website. It has been a long journey, with many twists and turns, and we know that the journey is far from over. This site is a work in progress, and we look forward to feedback from all of you who it is meant to serve — everyone involved in producing, sharing, discovering and enjoying children’s books.

By helping people discover children’s literature in South African languages, Puku is helping to put books into the hands — and the imaginations — of our children. We need more wonderful children’s books in isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, isiNdebele, Afrikaans and English — and we need to make those books easier for families, teachers and libraries to find.

We invite you to explore the new puku.co.za website where you can browse and buy children’s books. And please come back often: our collection will continue to grow month by month.

Let’s make International Literacy Day 2026 a day to remember — and let’s keep working together to ensure that every South African child can discover the joy of reading, in a language that feels like home.